During oral arguments in a case challenging the state’s telemedicine abortion ban, Iowa Solicitor General Jeffery Thompson said he would not object to a ruling protecting abortion rights in the Iowa Constitution.

An Iowa state lawmaker’s bill to define life as beginning at fertilization failed to meet a legislative deadline Friday, joining so-called personhood bills in at least nine other states introduced without success this year.

Joni Ernst is an example of how far-right views in the Republican Party have become the norm, and how the difference between “right-wing” and “establishment” Republicans is often more about style than substance.

As state legislative sessions gear up for what could be one of the worst years on record for reproductive rights, anti-choice lawmakers across the country have in recent weeks filed barrages of laws that would restrict access to safe and legal abortion. Many of these laws are identical, or nearly so, to laws that have repeatedly failed in the same states where they are being reintroduced.